The Thursday Show: Why Arhaus is suing RH. Plus: Arte is betting on the D&D Building

25:11And it was interesting because a designer from San Diego came up to me, fan of the show. We had a nice chat and she said, truthfully, high point, it's too long a trip for me. And so it serves a very different role than perhaps they had first thought, but an important one. Is it mostly designers? Is it mostly retailers? Like who's walking the floors? It's interesting because Vegas is a combination of gift shows and furniture. So there are a lot of different kinds of buyers there. There's certainly a retail presence, but just like we've seen at High Point. So one of the buildings in Vegas, the main floors in the A building are actually open year round as a design center, even when market isn't going on.

25:55That has become a very designer driven market, just like we've seen at High Point. So what were people talking about? Was it all tariffs all the time? Were they talking about crypto? What was on people's minds? You know, I wish I had asked more people about crypto. Funny enough, I got to run around with a microphone and do some man-on-the-street interviews and bumped into a friend of the show, Tim Stump, among others, and got to hear Tim's perspective. But I did talk to some stagers and some designers who were there. And yes, it's the Thursday show writ large. Everybody was talking about tariffs.

26:32But underneath it, they felt like once we get all of this resolved, things are pretty darn good. There wasn't as much doom and gloom, I felt, there among the people that I spoke to. I mean, they're eager for the housing market to come back, of course, but there was a lot more energy and activity than one might have thought. But all of the issues that we talk about are certainly top of mind for everybody there. Moving on, we're going to talk about an article in the Wall Street Journal that sparked some interesting conversation online. Mine. Last week, Catherine Brindley did a great story about redecorating her rental apartment on the cheap.

27:11But one of the designers mentioned in the piece, Chloe Redmond Warner, took issue with the idea that design comes down to inspiration. Interesting response, Fred. Yes? Yeah, this was an interesting, well, first of all, it was a good article. And, you know, Chloe started an interesting conversation as well. I should sort of break it down. So Catherine's piece for the Wall Street Journal was really, it was kind of like a get the look for less type article, but a very sophisticated Wall Street Journal-y get the look for less. You know, she's a freelance writer or a writer rather, and she's interested in design, but she lives in a rental in San Francisco and is in the position a lot of people are in where she's obsessed with designers but doesn't have the budget to hire them.

27:51And so she really broke down this, you know, pretty impressive toolkit of, you know, using Google reverse image search to find, you know, inspiration images and what they really mean, you know, using Facebook marketplace, something I myself am very fond of and, you know, really broke down, you know, these tools that you can use to sort of kind of get the designer look on your own, which is, you know, a classic format of an article. but I think she did a great job and it was a fun one. And then Chloe's response, Chloe's mentioned in the piece a few times as sort of an inspiration that this writer had been inspired by.

28:24And Chloe, I think, liked the article and wasn't calling her out necessarily, but she wanted to make the point that it's like, I think people walk away from these articles sort of thinking like, okay, well, if you have the inspiration, that's really 50 % of it. And then you just got a Google reverse image search and you can buy everything and it's simple. And she wanted to make the point that like, no, design really is about execution. It's not about I've seen this pretty picture and I can Google image search it or get chat GPT to find the sofa. It's about actually bringing it all together and making it happen.

28:53And it was sort of like a cri de corps on behalf of designers and their values. So interesting conversation, very polite, very respectful. I wish this was more dramatic, but I think it's an important one in the industry. No, I agree. And I think that I I thought this piece was great on several levels, and I think you and I have talked a lot about service pieces in the past. I love that Catherine Brindley shared so personally both images of her apartment, which I thought looked pretty impressive, and then really broke it down, and here's how I got this and found this and made this work. So I thought that part of it was really interesting.

29:32And as she said, the magic, my friends, is in the is in the edit. But even more than the edit, it's in that darn execution. It's it's in that it's in that whole part about, oh, yeah, you got to get all these things and then get them to the project. and they all have to arrive and they all have to be warehoused somewhere in some staging area and then ultimately brought over to the project. And actually it's all of that that is what is so darn hard and what is so remarkable about what designers pull off again and again. It's interesting because I think designers, they market their services using finished imagery.

30:10That's the beautiful stuff that catches people's eye and that becomes their calling card. but you know the unspoken reality of the industry uh is that you know what you actually hire a designer for is it's not simply that they have great taste it's that they can make it come to life in your space and you know 10 of the job is you know artistic and 90 of logistics and operations and i think that uh you know this is something that every designer knows but not every client does and i think that it was right for you know chloe to call that out i think it's just interesting because it's it's difficult to convey that you know i mean i think you know who wants to look at a designer's website and see all these spreadsheets and, you know, this is what I can do for you spend all day on the phone with the contractor.

30:50You know, I think it's, it's always going to be a little bit of a discovery that clients make when they, when they really engage with the designer for the first time. It's a, it's hard to get that message across. Yeah. And, and again, I think a lot of designers don't want to play up how good they are at the logistical side of the, of the business because they don't think that's what romances the client or gets people excited, right? And I get that. But I do think it's a reminder as ever of all that designers do and not everything that designers do is fully appreciated by potential clients. But interesting conversation and interesting piece.

31:28And it's always fascinating for me to see the stories on Instagram that lots of designers show up and weigh in on. And this was certainly one of them. All right. That's it for the news, but there's plenty more to check out on businessofhome.com, including the latest showroom openings and Sean Lowe's advice on adopting a new fee structure. We'll be back in a minute, but first, a quick break.

31:57We're taking a quick break to tell you a little bit more about June Lalloy. As a sister brand to Lalloy, June Lalloy maintains the same design acumen, high standards of quality and value. offering furniture, rugs, lighting, and decor for today's home. The June Lalloy trade program is designed to make doing business a breeze, offering exclusive benefits to designers that include special pricing, priority customer support, and a seamless sourcing experience. Visit juneleloy.com today to explore the collection and sign up for a trade account. That's j-o-o-n-l-o-l-o-i dot com. And now, back to the show.

32:45And we're back. I'm joined now by the managing director of Arte, Philippe Desartes. Philippe, thank you so much for joining me from Belgium. Hi, Dennis. I heard a lot about you. I follow your podcast very, very, very often because it keeps me a little bit informed about what's going on in the U.S. while I am based in Europe, of course, in Belgium. Well, I'm delighted to hear that. I appreciate that very much, Philippe. Thank you. And I'm glad that it's helping to keep you informed about this challenging market that is the U.S., which we'll talk about. But before we jump into that, let's talk a little bit about Arte and give listeners a little bit of the history.

33:29It's a third-generation family business, if I recall. Tell me a little bit. It's a second generation for Arte, but my grandfather was already also in paint business and my father was working there. So sometimes it's third. Is it third? Is it second? For Arte, it's second. Right. He had a paint business originally. So Arte is a European company based in Belgium. The company is founded in 1981. We are 100 % family owned company and it's run by myself and my brother. And we are very grateful to have a great team of more than 200 people that help us every day. And what is the primary? Tell me a little bit about the product offering from Arte.

34:15I mean, I know it is a wall covering company, but you tell me. Well, of course, it's a 100 % wall covering company. We decided, I think, about 15 years ago, where we also tried with fabrics to stop doing that. because like we sometimes say, when you cut in our arm, wallpaper is coming out. So it was very difficult to talk about fabrics. We talked hours and hours and hours about wallpapers. And then at the end, somebody said, hey, we also have to talk about the new fabric line or the fabric collection that we are launching. So we decided 15 years to do what we are best at. So we had to decide at a certain moment, what are we now?

34:55Are we going to be high-end? Are we going to be middle-end? And we always wanted to be high end. So we decided to go 100 % into that direction, but take our time, take our customers also with us. And today we have a product mix that is quite well balanced. I think a lot of people think that Arte is only expensive and unique, but we also have a lot of very nice base products. In terms of the breakdown of your business, when you think about the contract side versus the residential side. Tell me what that divide looks like. I think today that the company is maybe 55 % hospitality contract and 45 % of residential, depending on the market.

35:39In Europe, you still have some residential or retail markets in many, many other continents and countries that almost disappear. It's always going through interior designers, not through a shop anymore. And do you feel that that's a trend that's going to continue, that there's going to be less retail business and more designer-driven business? Probably, because maybe it's a little bit like a landscape architect. Of course, I'm looking through European glasses. That was something that was very uncommon today. It's a very common thing. And I think that maybe the same thing will happen here in Europe.

36:21And I think in the U.S. it's already for a long time that people, when they do their home, they go to a stylist, a decorator, an interior designer, somebody that can give them advice and that help them. So I think it will be a trend. Yes. Also in retail market. Do a lot of people use designers in Belgium? Do a lot of people use interior designers? I think our retailers, they are the designers or we call them the decorators. But I think that more and more people are using an interior designer yesterday. Definitely. So I'm curious, is the United States the biggest market for you? Is that your primary focus?

36:59Or how does it break down with how the rest of the world is for you? To be honest, I think that Europe is still for us. And I consider Europe as a market. But I definitely think that the United States has also always been historically a very big market in decorating. And there is still a lot of potential for Arte. we are trying for the last 30 years and it seems that for the last five six seven years we are doing something very well maybe just needed some time i think we started in the 90s in the united states first we were we had a lot of books that were sold through schumacher as a distributor but that did not work out the way that my father liked so he started his own company then my nephew or my cousin sorry tom came to work in the united states for arte then tom decided to do another thing he went wanted to go into furniture so is that tom is that tom varellin that we've talked about okay so tom varellin right so we had him on the show and he talked about he talked about the arte art business and and bringing it to the states and and doing the sales there okay so he was one of the pioneers together with my father to bring the company to the u.s and then after a couple of years he decided to do his own thing so we had to find somebody else to run the company that was not so easy because that's the biggest challenge for a overseas company to find the right people to help you and then uh frederick from romo it was my another former guest on the show and uh and and and a big a big name in the industry so frederick now is with romo for many years but then he shows up and he's selling Arte.

38:46Frederick was working with Deloitte and he was a very good friend of my brother. And my father thought, oh, that is an ambitious guy. So maybe I have to ask him if he's not interested in running our company in the US. And he took the challenge. And at that time, we were the distributor of Romo. And then after a while, Romo decided to go by themselves. so on their own and Frederick joined them because I think Frederick saw more potential at that time in the Romo future than maybe in ours and I think also we were maybe not as mature as Romo was because Romo was from the UK had more experience with designers they had the company existed longer they probably had money to invest and now I think our company the headquarters is more mature we are ready we understand the business very well and what we have been doing for the last 10 years in paris during paris deco off it helped us a lot in convincing people in our products because we decided to have a nice showroom in in paris and we had a lot of american visitors people that came to paris deco off and people came to see our showroom and started to see our products and i think it helped us a lot well and i'm so glad that you mentioned that because i've i've had a lot of conversations with people who have seen paris deco off as a vehicle to obviously to to show product to people from all over the world but a high concentration of american designers have been coming to paris deco off and it turns out to be a wonderful way to show product to the American market.

40:36Of course, of course. We can show it the way we want to show it because of that showroom. Before we had an exhibition at Maison et Objet, but you know, you always have to build a stand and here we have a permanent showroom that we pay a lot of attention to the details, to make the space beautiful, to do the presentation the way it should be, to elevate everything. And I think that if you have to go to somebody and you have a lot of samples and collection books with you, it's never the same than when you see it in its full glory. And in the showroom, we can do that, of course. That's the whole point of a showroom.

41:16No, exactly. And I've often wondered about that challenge, particularly with wall covering. It's all very nice. And I'm sure you have very talented road reps and salespeople who are out there. But I've always thought that it's a particularly challenging product to sell on the road without a showroom being able to see installations, without being able to see the product in larger scale. How do you think about that? You need strong people that want to carry those books. You need really talented people. Because if you look at the American companies, you don't make collection books like we do. We really make wall-covering books like you know them maybe from a long time ago.

41:59And we still do that because we have still a lot of retailers. But I also think that there is nothing more inspiring than a good photo together with the product, tell the story in that book. So it helps a lot to explain what we are doing to bring that story. Well, and so this is leading us up to the exciting showroom conversation that we're going to have. You are the latest contestant in the ongoing battle between, and I'm joking, of course, but we've been talking so much lately about challenges at the D &D building, many tenants going to the New York Design Center or going out on the street and going to different places.

42:44is you just recently, just earlier this year, opened a really beautiful new showroom in the D &D building. I had the pleasure of spending some time there and was very impressed. And the showroom is beautiful. I know that that's a huge investment. So tell me about that, this big decision, this big investment, and really how you thought about it. I have always been inspired and I always admired what was happening in the U.S. because when I was 20, my father took me with him on his trips to the United States, and then we already went into showrooms. So for me, it was like, whoa, you have a building with all these showrooms.

43:23That was something that did not exist here in Europe, and it still does not exist. The only one is in London where you have really a design center. But besides that, I don't know any design center. in Paris you have showrooms but they are not in a design center you still have to walk through all these streets so it's less concentrated you really have to go to that place and I was always impressed by those beautiful fabric products and they were always so well presented and draped so beautifully and then I came to the boards where you had the wallpapers and they were always in a yeah not presented in the right way stapled it didn't look nearly as good on these bars crook bars and then you had that beautiful textile hanging there and and then you had a couple of bars with strips stapled all the colorways and i always thought if we do one day a showroom it cannot be like that and i think that has been the motivation of trying to find a good way a different way an inspiring way to present our products and i think we succeed in that we developed a we call it our wing systems because you are almost interactive with the product you flip through it that's something that people like that's what i learned in the in the us try to invent another thing that is better than flipping through boards not easier we have done many things but it's not easy it's so quick you see it immediately and hop you go but it we wanted to do it in a better way so we extrude our panels ourselves we really upscaled the way of presenting uh wall coverings and then also i think because we talk often about the buildings is the building good or is the building not good but are the showrooms that good there are a lot of showrooms that look a little bit dusty and we said we cannot do it that way if I go in a fashion shop in a handbag store, everything is beautiful you take the same handbag and you put it in a different environment, it's not the same handbag anymore, so the branding is so important and I think that what we try to do is talk the language of presenting product 2025 and beyond a lot of people might think that we are crazy going that far in it but we're working with people that love interior design so when they come into that environment and they open the door and it feels like oh this is a nice space then i think we can only of course you need good products otherwise you can make the most beautiful boards you have, they will see it.

46:16But if you do both well, then it will definitely help. And people will come to the showroom, I'm sure. And how did you think about the D &D building and what it represented versus, I mean, I'm sure you must have looked at the New York Design Center, I'm guessing. I'm assuming you must have given it a lot of thought. Tell me what stood out for you or what made the decision? What stood out? Of course, before you do something like this, you start looking around and you doubt everything you're doing. Is this the right decision? When you do it, you're there. You have to continue. So I went also to 200 Lexington.

46:57Are we going to do street level? But I think that the brand is maybe not strong enough yet to go and invest in a certain area on the street level and open a door there because we still have to build a good network of customers. And the D &D building has that network. And there are a lot of companies in that building. Maybe they see not enough new people, but I'm sure that for us, a lot of people heard about the company, but they never saw the company. and i know the traffic is not anymore like it used to be i know that it's but is that a big problem i think the way of doing things are maybe different for the designers when you go to a fashion shop that you like do you need to go every week no you go once every maybe twice a year and then you go online and you understand the brand you bought into the brand you know what they are doing you like it or you don't like it and people are i think you need a flagship showroom so that they can understand what you are doing and maybe then the extension of that can be social media can be internet is that done bad no it's just the way it is today so i think that it's Because I was listening the other day to another podcast of you and I heard, yeah, people, you know, at the same time, is the building good?

48:33Is the building not good? And then at the same time we say, yes, but designers need to feel and touch the product. Yeah, where are you going to feel and touch the product? In the showroom. So maybe you have, your brand has to be strong enough that people will come to your showroom. And how are you thinking about the long term? Do you imagine, you were just saying that you need a flagship showroom. Do you imagine that this will be your flagship showroom? Or if you find even greater success, can you imagine opening flagships in other locations? I think, of course, the USA is a very, very big country.

49:14Not everybody or people from Florida, LA, they're not going to go to New York all the time. But it is definitely a good way to, when you talk to people and you can say, we have a showroom in New York, come and see us. Then they will, maybe some will come. And it will definitely give you more credibility. Are we going to open other showrooms? I don't know. I think we first have to look what this one is going to do. We have to pay for this one first and see how it goes. Yeah, why not? But do we need that in every state? Not at all. And I think we already have very good partners where we work with.

49:55So if they do well, then there is not the need of doing that. I think we can also invest in a lot of social media so that people find your product, that they can go online, that we service very well our sampling that they do the sample request they do online i think that is very important that that service is good so future wise let's start with this one and then make sure that our service our quality and our products are very good and then we can think about the next steps and how are you finding business in the in the states as you say it's such a big country and and generally different markets are performing at different levels but What are you finding in this challenging environment?

50:39I hear a lot that it is not easy to get appointments with designers. That is getting more and more difficult. I always have a little bit of a hate-love relationship when people say that because we also have 50 sales reps. I have 50 sales reps on my payroll that go everywhere. and if you have good product people, they let you come because the designer also needs inspiration, colors, designs. So that is very important. If we do well what we are doing and the brand is strong, maybe having those designer calls will be not so difficult as we think. It might be for other people maybe more difficult because I can understand that a designer is not waiting to see 50 firms in a month that come and show their product, and especially not when you have always the same type of product.

51:35So I think that it is up to the companies also to surprise the people, then you will get your appointments, I'm sure. Another big challenge in the industry, so obviously we talk about tariffs a great deal, Philippe, I'm sure you've heard that, and that's one challenge. But another challenge that's interesting for European vendors especially is that the dollar has fallen pretty dramatically over the past year. Let's call it 10, 11%. And that is an unusual move for the dollar to move lower that dramatically. And that has certainly impacted things. Yeah, it will definitely not play in the positive way in our cards.

52:23having a 15 % I hope that is the final tariff now that Europe has negotiated together with a weaker dollar is not the best ingredient but okay, I think the dollar dropped over the last couple of months, not year I think it was quite okay a year ago and maybe we still have to wait and see what is going to happen in the next coming months because the world is a little bit on fire and we should not panic and try to do our business the best way we can and maybe within six months or a year if you see all everything that happened over the last four or five years next year can be maybe a complete different situation who knows how will you manage a 15 % tariff for product coming into the US?

53:19Do you imagine that you will take some of that cost yourself and reduce your margins and pass some of it along? Or will you be raising prices once this is all settled? How do you navigate? Well, I think we're dealing already with it for the last two months with 10 % instead of 15%. So now it is 15%. I think it is good that if this is the tariff that some rest can return because it was so uncertain that yeah what do you have to do i think of course yeah i can i can imagine that in products that will come new products that will come in any business and not only our business or the fabric business but in any kind of business if the product can handle an extra cost companies are probably gonna integrate it so we have to see what will happen.

54:15I think I worry maybe a little bit more about what's going to happen with all the other countries. We know China is 30 percent, Vietnam they talked about 46, is it now going to be 20? What will it be? Because our portfolio of products is coming from Europe but we have a big portfolio of products created by a variety of countries because we We develop everything, we design everything, but we work with a lot of good companies that create what we ask them to do. And then we buy, of course, the inventory, but it has the origin of that country. If we do not really change something to that product, it's not like when you buy yarns, maybe when you weave, you can say, we created a different product.

55:03But if you buy a wall covering and it comes here, it still is a wall covering. And not just because we add a print that the origin is going to change. Well, and has that caused you to make a lot of changes within the business? Have you changed your supply chain? Have you changed your shipping operations? No, I think the pressure of creating products where the perceived value is in balance is more or higher than before. because yeah i think people want to pay more for a product but you also need to get something for it if you buy something and you think this is overpaid and you go home you think shit what i bought it was too expensive but it also can happen that you buy something and you see it on your wall in my case that you might think oh i'm happy with that with my decision and you forget about maybe the price that you paid for something so i think it will be important for all companies to make quality and good and beautiful products because prices are not going to go down in the future, I think.

56:13So the product has to be even better, right? Yes, and that's not easy. It's not easy. And the simple products are mostly the most difficult ones to make. A beautiful plane. How can you be very different? But a lot of people are using planes. So you have to be very innovative in color, in design, in construction, and surprise people. I'm wondering, Philippe, as we wrap up, one of your hats is a marketing hat. And I'm curious, you know, you were talking earlier about you hope that people will get to a showroom, see the product, understand the brand, and then come to the website and start to interact in that way.

56:57I wonder what is working for you from a marketing perspective. It seems marketing is more challenging than it has ever been. We used to put an ad in Architectural Digest, and that was our marketing campaign, and that was good enough. Now it seems social media, as you mentioned earlier, plays such a huge role, but also entertaining designers seems to be a huge component of marketing efforts here in the States. How are you thinking about it? It became a and, and, and, and. And you have to do social, and you have to entertain, and you still have to do print media. Not anymore in all the magazines, I think.

57:43You have to be very, you have to think a lot about your strategies. What are you going to do? Which magazine? Why? The same on social media. What are my targets? Who is my audience that I want to go to? What kind of video do I need to make? What kind of photography? because all that is also new five years ago we did things but today you have to do things different because it's all about i do not agree that it's all about clicks but at least when you look at something it needs to do something to you you know you see something and you say oh and it stays in your mind if it does nothing then it's a waste of time so the challenge is what is the right image what is the right video so you have to analyze all the things that are happening on the social media and learn from it constantly learn learn learn learn develop new applications we talk about ai for me also something difficult i think in the organization ai is maybe more easy than how am i going to use it with a designer ai on my website in what way how that And that is something that I always try to keep in mind, that things still stay high-end.

58:59Maybe you do not give the possibility that they can view a product in their environment if you're not sure about the look of the result. Because sometimes a beautiful product in not such a nice environment or setting can be an ugly product. and an ugly product in a good setting can be a better looking product so sometimes it's better to leave the dream and to leave it up to the specialist because i can make a photo but maybe the designer says this is not the way i'm going to use the product so my photo has already no effect anymore but it can help him to understand it and if he says oh but they not they did a nice setting and it inspires him and i think we're doing a good thing you can measure everything dennis you can measure everything and at the end with all the figures you don't even know anymore what to do sometimes you have to go in the market feel things that's what they call entrepreneurship and do something believe in it and then you measure it but you can measure a lot and then maybe what are we going to do now i think it's also important to be in the field to listen to the people well as you say you can you can generate a lot of a lot of data but but what what do you really do with all of that and and i think that is also part of being you know make good analysis with your teams talk about it what do we really need and then it will definitely help you i think in in what we are doing color wise but again if you're going to do that it's going to be what bash bash bash bash bash bash are we going to make an only bash product no we cannot so we have to balance it out and bring in the color although we know sometimes these colors are not going to sell like it should but it's part of the package well Philippe you've got your work cut out for you but you've taken the bold move you've opened a showroom at the D &D building now how long a lease did you sign?

1:01:01do you do five year lease? I have no clue Dennis I hope a three year so we can make an analyze but to be honest I'm very happy because I'm happy that we can show who we are to designers and that they get inspired and that they can work with our products. That is, then my dream will come true and my father's. Well, I'm certain that they'll be impressed with the showroom because it's an impressive space. And so I hope that that does lead a lot of designers to discover you. And I wish you great success because I know that that is an enormous investment and a big undertaking for you. you're so kind to make the time to talk and I really appreciate it thank you so much thank you very much for having me Dennis

1:01:53and we're back we're getting to the end of the show here but before we go we'd like to take a second to highlight anything going on in the industry that might have caught our eye Fred Stephen Colbert caught my eye this week Dennis and not for the reason you think I was uh was watching the the uh some clips from the show online as I tend to do it as I'm sure the show does not like me to do. And there was a little shout out to Kelly Wurstler. We've already played like 17 clips on this episode, so I'm not going to dig it up. But Colbert was sort of making a joke about interior design and he referenced Kelly Wurstler.

1:02:26I just thought that was really funny and just shows how much she has really crossed over from being like an industry celebrity into a celebrity that gets dropped in pop culture environments. So I thought that was just very tickled by that. The other thing I noticed is Food 52, which we talked about a lot over the past months, you know, they're really pivoting away from Food52, frankly, and towards, you know, building up Schoolhouse into more of, you know, the center of their world. And I've noticed that they've posted a lot more stuff to their Home52 Instagram account, which I think they started a while back, kind of let dormant for a little bit, but that is definitely an area of focus for them.

1:03:02So just another sign of, you know, the continued shift over there away from being an online marketplace and more towards being, you know, schoolhouse plus. So that was interesting to me. What caught you out of this week? A couple of things. First of all, the sad news of E.J. Victor officially deciding not to resume operations. I think we had a sense that this was likely to happen. We talked about E.J. Victor in past shows. Unfortunately, they experienced some of the North Carolina floods that happened and they were waiting on an insurance payment and there was a big settlement. And unfortunately, while they were waiting for that settlement, they lost a lot of their customer base.

1:03:42And so they decided to officially announce that they will not be resuming operations, which is sad because that was a great brand. But hopefully the people that were involved can move on to the next thing. The other thing that caught my eye, interestingly enough, we just had a new, and this is going to get nerdy, Fred, but we just had a new GDP number out. And it was very strong. But the Wall Street Journal editorial board wanted to make sure that we understood exactly why it was so strong. And they actually wrote a headline, which I loved. The weirdest GDP report ever was the headline from the Wall Street Journal report.

1:04:21And the reason the number was so strong, you don't think that Trump's tariff announcements are having any big impact, they said. Well, guess what? Imports during the last quarter actually declined by over 30 percent. That's right, Fred. And you'd have to go back to the Great Depression to find a period of time. And that happened over years where imports were lower by more than 30 percent. Not even during COVID or during the great financial crisis did imports fall that dramatically. So it was all that inventory that everyone bought in the first quarter. And then because they had bought all that inventory, guess what?

1:05:00They didn't import a darn thing this last quarter. And that's why the number looks deceptively strong. So obviously tariffs are having a huge impact. And seeing imports falling by 30 % tells you how big an impact the tariffs have really had. See, that's why I have to stick around for the end of the show here. You don't get these nerdy tidbits if you turn it off after the interview. Exactly. You miss the nerdy part and you don't want to do that. All right. That's all the time we have today. Thanks so much for listening. If you want to keep up with the latest news, browse job listings, or take a workshop, visit us online at businessofhome.com.

1:05:40If you want to get in touch with the show, write to us at podcast at businessofhome.com. This episode was produced by Fred Nikolaus and Caroline Burke and edited by Michael Castaneda. I'm Dennis Scully. Have a great weekend, and we'll be back with you on Monday.